Nice article in Vanity Fair about the complete bankruptcy of Iceland. Basically, fishermen became currency traders overnight without so much as a single day’s training. The whole country went finance-mad.

In just three or four years an entirely new way of economic life had been grafted onto the side of this stable, collectivist society, and the graft had overwhelmed the host. […] In the end, Icelanders amassed debts amounting to 850 percent of their G.D.P. (The debt-drowned United States has reached just 350 percent.)

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